Patients taking anti-obesity drugs will only see “modest” weight loss and many will remain significantly obese or overweight, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal.

The study, which looked at the long-term effectiveness of anti-obesity medications, found that three drugs recommended for long-term use - orlistat, sibutramine and rimonabant, reduced weight by less than 11 pounds (5 kg). This equated to a loss of less than 5% of total body weight. Guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence recommend stopping the use of anti-obesity drugs if 5% of total body weight is not lost after three months.

While making changes to lifestyle and diet are recommended as the initial treatment for obesity, the use of anti-obesity drugs is common.

The Indonesian archipelago contains about 10% of the world’s tropical rainforest, which plays a critical role in regional watershed protection as well as in global efforts to conserve biodiversity and to sequester carbon. However, Indonesia currently experiences one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.

Indonesia also supports the world’s largest population of Muslims, whose religion has a strong influence on their daily life.

To combat deforestation, a new project led by Stuart Harrop and Matthew Linkie from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent is aiming to improve conservation by raising awareness of Islamic teachings about conservation.

On Wednesday 21 November, TU Delft will demonstrate how improved control techniques can reduce the risk of aircraft crashes. The demonstration involves reconstructing troubled flights – such as the El Al flight which crashed in the Bijlmer area of Amsterdam in 1992 – in a flight simulator and adding the newly developed technology.

The presentation in Delft forms the final phase of a research project involving the GARTEUR international research partnership (participants include TU Delft and the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR) into Fault Tolerant Control. This involves techniques for keeping damaged aircraft in the air for longer and enabling continuing flight control.

The key to this is to improve control techniques which enable the aircraft to continue to be controlled.

Mothers who reported sleeping five hours or less per day when their babies were six months old had a threefold higher risk for substantial weight retention (11 pounds or more) at their baby’s first birthday than moms who slept seven hours per day, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente and Harvard Medical School / Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

The study, published in the November issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, is the first to look at the impact of sleep deprivation on postpartum weight retention. Previous studies have looked at the effect of early postpartum sleep deprivation on mothers’ cognitive and emotional health but never associated weight gain.

New research published in Quaternary Science Reviews says the collapse of the North American (Laurentide) Ice Sheet caused the flood believed to be behind the "Noah's Ark" story 8000 years ago that kick-started modern European agriculture.

The results indicate a catastrophic rise in global sea level led to the flooding of the Black Sea and drove dramatic social change across Europe. The research team argues that, in the face of rising sea levels driven by contemporary climate change, we can learn important lessons from the past.

The collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet released a deluge of water that increased global sea levels by up to 1.4 meters and caused the largest North Atlantic freshwater pulse of the last 100,000 years.

A multinational team of researchers writing in Nature has shown for the first time that the immune system can stop the growth of a cancerous tumor without actually killing it.

Scientists have been working for years to use the immune system to eradicate cancers, a technique known as immunotherapy. The new findings prove an alternate to this approach exists: When the cancer can't be killed with immune attacks, it may be possible to find ways to use the immune system to contain it.